Mark 5:17-18 And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts. And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him.
What Do You Think About Jesus?
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It is incredible all the emotions that the Lord Jesus stirs within people. He can stir wonder, gratitude, love, hatred, animosity, and jealousy. As God the Son, Jesus has always stirred a great depth and variety of emotions in a variety of people.
Mark 5 is a good example of this because on four different occasions you find four different emotional responses to Who Jesus is and what He had done. For instance, Jesus healed a man who was possessed of demons. Jesus evicted those demons, and sent them into a herd of swine that ran into the sea. The people saw the man who had been possessed clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid of Jesus.
How incredible! They weren’t afraid of this man who had been out of his mind, but they were afraid of Jesus. They had more compassion on their lost pigs than they had on the man, and they had more fear of the Lord Who evicted the demons than they had of the demons. In short, what they felt about Jesus was based on what they thought of Him. Jesus was a threat. That is why they asked Him to leave their country.
In contrast, the man who had been healed asked to go with Jesus, but Jesus told him to go home and tell his friends the great things that the Lord had done for him. That is exactly what he did. This describes gratitude. He felt thankfulness because he thought Jesus to be gracious. We are living in a day when people are so ungrateful for what they have, who they are, and what they have been given. Consequently, they miss out on this emotion of gratitude because they don’t see Jesus as gracious.
When this man began to tell people about what Jesus had done, the Bible says, “All men did marvel.” They were amazed because of what they thought of Jesus. What did they think of Jesus? They thought He was a mystery. They did not comprehend Him.
If you were to survey ten people off the street about what they thought of Jesus, you would have a variety of answers and some of those answers would be quite confusing. Some of them would sound quite good and positive, but at the end of the day, many people are trusting Jesus plus some other thing that is good but not Christ. Jesus remains to them a mystery. They marvel.
Finally, Jesus was going to heal the daughter of a man named Jairus. Before He arrived, Jairus’ daughter died. Those around Jairus said, “Don’t trouble Jesus any longer. Your daughter is gone.” They thought it was too late and too much to ask. But Jesus responded, “Be not afraid, only believe.”
When He brought this girl back from the dead, the people were “astonished with great astonishment.” Why that emotion? It was because they felt as if Jesus were limited in what He could do. Jesus clearly surpassed their low expectations.
Those who felt that Jesus was a threat felt fear. Those who felt He was gracious felt gratitude. Those who felt He was a mystery marveled. Those who felt He was limited were astonished. There are so many emotions we can feel about the Lord Jesus, but the bottom line is that Jesus is God and Jesus is good. How you feel about Jesus depends on what you think of Him.